You need creativity with gingerbread projects

Chuck Boutwell

Friday

Dec 25, 2009 at 8:00 AM

It’s Christmas day. This is the year when we commemorate the birth of Jesus. Of course, Jesus was almost certainly born in the spring or early summer. But those who moved the celebration to Dec. 25 were planning ahead.But it’s good that we don’t celebrate it in the spring or early summer. That would be too close to Easter. Besides, it’s much better for the American economy to engage in all this commerce near the end of the calendar year. But that’s another column.Christmastime for me has meant, for the last few years at least, the LWL Annual Ginger Fest.It has been sponsored the past three years by the Ladies Who Lunch, which is either a social organization I belong to or a handful of friends who feel the need to take a break every Wednesday and spend some time with other silly, funny and creative people for food, laughs and stories.It’s good for the soul.It actually started the year before on a semi-whim. Either me or my apprentice (I forget which) had the idea to make a gingerbread house in the form of a mobile home. Having lived in several over the years, I felt qualified. So we got together with a couple of other friends for a night of silliness. As opposed to the more serious evening most people have when building gingerbread trailers.The following year, LWL was formed, so I got together with four other Ladies Who Lunch for an even sillier evening of ginger-related construction.These were silly, funny and creative people, so these were silly, creative and funny gingerbread projects.I built a replica of Stonehenge out of gingersnap cookies and frosting and covered it with white cotton candy to simulate a light snowfall. I called it “Ginger Henge on a Snowy Evening.”And mine was far from the silliest — which says a lot about this group of people. Next (though in no particular order), a lady built a Flintstones house. It was a nice piece with lots of frosting and a nice tilted roof.The next lady built a re-creation of the HTV studios. She was fascinated with HTV almost to the point of being an obsession. She had the interview desk and a couple of people made out of circus peanut marshmallow candy (if I remember correctly).The next one looked like a regular gingerbread house at first glance, but got weird and interesting when you looked deeper. Was that a metaphor for its creator?It was a nice little gingerbread house scene with candy canes and little candy beads and gummy bears and a gingerbread man with a severed head and gumdrops and a police helicopter and little peppermints and a crime-scene investigation vehicle. This was a crime scene. In fact, it was “CSI: Gingerbread.”And lastly (though still in no particular order) was a sweet little gingerbread manger scene. A nice structure made of graham crackers (an officially sanctioned construction material) and frosting. Then you notice that the characters all look kind of funny. Strangely shaped. Deformed. Pork skins.Yes. This gingerbread-building lady had taken fried pork skins and dug through them to find ones vaguely shaped like each Nativity character. Oh, this pork ring looks kind of like a sheep.Then he glued on each one a little paper cut-out face. A little cow face for the cow. A little baby-daddy face for Giuseppe. Etc.The angel was perfect. He had found just the right pork rind with beautiful pork rind wings spreading out. It must have been divinely inspired. Of course, the fact that this was pork and the Nativity family was orthodox Jewish added a whole different layer of irony and fun to the scene.The next year for the Second (or Third depending on how you are counting) Annual LWL Ginger Fest, we had three times as many participants and it grew into a large party. There is not really room to get into it this week, but I can describe my house.Well, it was actually a scene.There was a grassy area in the foreground with candy canes clustered together like trees. Other candies were piled up like boulders. In the middle was an expanse of chocolate. I used Hershey’s syrup to accomplish this. The river bank was lined with candies and mints and gumdrops and caramels. Across the chocolate river was a wall with an opening. And a floor made of graham crackers (again, sanctioned building material).On this floor were short little orange gingerbread men. I had made them little overalls out of blue frosting. They were dumping little bags into the river.Sound familiar?Here’s a hint: Oompah, loompa, doo pitty doo. I’ve got another puzzle for you…It was the chocolate river scene from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”The “original” with Gene Wilder, not the interesting-but-psychotic one with Johnny Depp.It was a lot of fun, but took a lot of work. Plus I spent about $80 on construction materials — most of which I didn’t need. But I had plenty to share.Willy Wonka would have liked that.Next week: Ginger Fest 2009 — floating houses, paranoid schizophrenics and That Guy brings the space monster.Cha-cha-cha.

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